America in the Dark Ages?

Image copyright SmithsonianSmithsonian Castle

It is said more and more often in America today that we could be entering into a new Dark Ages. To truly comprehend this, it would be worthwhile to examine the real Dark Ages.

According to historical records, the Dark Ages existed in the west from late in the 5th century to about 800. As the name implies, it was a time of uniform unproductivity in every way imagineable in world history. There is much discussion about exactly when, where, and why the Dark Ages came to exist. It is really quite simple.

The Dark Ages came to be where the Romans had been, and after they left.

And the why? When the never-before-seen greatness of the Roman civilization was removed from individual and collective lives, these lives were the much worse for it, and either nothing or mistaken policies or practices became the only substitutes. The western world came to suffer extraordinarily when it could not provide what it turned out only the Romans could.

The Romans were, during the time that they ruled the world, basically everywhere. From Britain in the west to Egypt and beyond in the east, Rome, whether by martial efforts or simply by settling and establishing a version of their civilization, changed the world everywhere they touched, with their influence maintained for centuries. When Rome stopped being the astonishing international power it was, and this occurred, coincidentally, due to internal rather than external forces, an amazing amount of what was great and/or civilized about the world was lost for centuries.

The Dark Ages began.

With the loss of Roman brilliance and technology, there were, for example, no more lighted roads. Roman engineering had discerned how to locate and position luminescent rocks to line the roads at night. Something as seemingly simple as this was lost with the Romans absence in the world, and activity for at least half a day was lost to the resulting populace. Internal heating in homes was lost to the world as well, as the Romans had devined a very effective way of forcing various methods of heating through tunnels beneath the floors of homes. Not only was this technology not maintained in the Dark Ages, thus for centuries losing the possibility to heat buildings in which people lived and worked, but the inhabitants of this time misunderstood the purpose of these underground tunnels and used them as their easy repositories of waste. So not only was a rather glorious technology lost for centuries, but such ignorance also expanded the significant sanitation problems of the time.

There was no more glass at the advent of the Dark Ages, the technology of manufacturing glass also having gone with the Romans. Not just decorative glass, but any and all glass manufacture was no longer possible after the Romans left. Arrow slits became the predominant form of window treatment, with nothing coming between the elements and the openings in the walls of homes until shutters were invented. People basically stopped bathing after the Roman influence was no more, and the more sophisticated methods of bathing, developed to an extraordinary degree by the Romans, completely disappeared.

The Dark Ages was a very soiled, sickly, and smelly time.

Multi-story housing disappeared with the Romans, as did paved roads. If you drive in England today, for example, when you find yourself driving on a straight road, and keep in mind this is more than two thousand years ago, you are driving on a Roman road, one that had been basically blasted through whatever Roman engineers refused to accept as an obstacle. Should the road be a curvy one, it was clearly a British road, such engineering as came naturally to the Romans was not to appear in Britain for many more centuries. Roads basically disappeared in the Dark Ages, and ways of conveyance were not much more than mud rutted pathways during that time. Architecture ceased to be an art, or science, if you will, and needless to say, engineering stopped being the remarkable practice it was under the Romans. Things like cement, which the Romans used to create wonders like the aqueducts, were no longer used because how to make the product had been lost with the Romans. Arches, a seemingly miraculous form of building, were no longer used in building because after the Romans, no one knew how to build them anymore. Things that had seemed to be natural in life, things that were taken for granted, things that made life easier and more pleasant during the time of the Romans, things like socks; like iron paddocks; like odometers; like horseshoes; like long burning candles; like tile ceilings, all ceased to be in the Dark Ages.

One wonders whether it was a purposeful rejection of the Romans that the people of the Dark Ages implemented to strike out against their centuries’ long supremacy. If so, it was a strike against themselves, because the loss of civilization was remarkable, and it took people in the west at that time centuries to recover many aspects of that civilization. The people of the Dark Ages held on to their ignorance and their superstition for centuries, until the creativity and individuality native to man came again to the fore, only to begin to recreate what had already existed for centuries.

And what would we lose in the Dark Ages Obama and his ilk are promising us?

First, we would lose the greatest work of political, theoretical and economic freedom ever created, the U.S. Constitution. Obama and the people he has put in power do not like the Constitution; they can barely tolerate the Congress and the Supreme Court. To them, the sooner this ‘antiquated’ document is relegated to the trash pile of history, where it should have been since long ago, the better. The rights of the individual, in deference to the rights of the collective, would be lost, thus making the United States of America anything but what it was supposed to be. The private sector, under Obama, is allowed to exist only to support the efforts of the government, and while it must continue to survive to accomplish this, it will do so only by being regulated strictly by government. A class system, for the first time in American history, will be established, as those in power, who have no accountability, except to the state, will be free to revel in all the perks they now pretend to despise. We see this now in the ‘colonial’ behavior of Obama and his family, with their constant indulgence in luxury vacationing while the people of our nation suffer financially more and more the longer this man is in power. The increasing misery and poverty of the people of the United States of America mean nothing to Obama and his fellow travelers; the Obamas and their ilk don’t care, as those in power in any totalitarian state don’t care; they don’t have to in the new Dark Ages.

Humor will be lost, freedom of expression will be lost, entrepreurialism will be lost, individualism will be lost. Difference of opinion will no longer be allowed, and divergence from the leftist agenda will not be permitted. Look at California and you see the Dark Ages that awaits you as determined by the left: you can’t have the toilet that you want; you can’t have the light bulb that you want; you can’t drive on any day that you want; you can’t buy a particular breed of dog you want; you can’t even have as many children as you and your spouse might want. Oh, and you might not be able to join with the spouse you want, for that matter.

The Dark Ages is exactly what it connotes. It speaks to a time when there is no more enlightenment, no more freedom, much less encouragement, to create, to more forward, to bring light and creation and joy and comfort to one’s fellow creatures. In the fifth century, the loss of the greatness of Rome led to a dark period in the history of the west, but the relentless creativity of man led to an eventual age of enlightenment. The Dark Ages promised by Obama and his fellow leftists is a different matter. It is a purposeful Dark Age meant to bring about stultifying (at best) statist uniformity for us all that will not only destroy America utterly and completely, but it will bring an age to the west that could put in place a Dark Ages for all time.